This invention relates in general to allocation and operation of data processing resources within a digital network and in particular to a method for confirming the connectivity and functionality of the allocated digital network resources.
The operation of digital networks require a significant investment in infrastructure; yet competitive pressures and the fast pace of technological change result in low profit margins. Naturally, network providers (such as Internet service providers and backbone providers) seek to minimize their equipment cost, optimize latency, and maximize scalability, robustness, and maintainability of their networks. Network architectures directed toward satisfying these goals often cause a tradeoff in network flexibility, such as the ability to reconfigure resources to provide different services.
For instance, it may be cost effective to employ a network architecture in which data processing resources are distributed in separate remote locations with several units of one type of processing component at one location (i.e., network node) and several units of another type of processing component at another node. Those processing resources may be used to generate standalone services. For instance, a group of Class 4 call processing resources may be at one location, and a group of Service Control Point (SCP) processing resource may be at another. A compositional service is one that is generated from, or composed of, standalone services. Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) telephony services are an example of compositional services generated by combining the previously mentioned call processing and service control point processing services. Another such service is the delivery of audiovisual content (e.g., videoconferencing or streaming of movies) to an end user. Various component services will be necessary to provide the complete compositional service, such as data storage services, media conversion services, authentication/authorization services, and billing services.
Typically, physical processing components for performing the functions of a compositional service have been manually configured to construct the service. The capacities of the processing components dedicated to the composed service have been based on the expected usage of the service and balanced against the demands generated by other components at expected usage levels. To guarantee a certain performance level, usually denoted as quality of service or QoS, at times of peak usage, a capacity level would have to be built into the services which is then unused at off-peak times, which is usually a majority of the time. To avoid excessive cost, a service usually is provided with enough capacity to handle typical loads but less capacity than would be required to handle peaks loads without degradation. Thus, a component dedicated to one service may be unused or underutilized during a time that another service is congested because of a lack of capacity of that same type of component. In other words, a component of a type “X” included in a composed group of components for a service of a type “A” may be unused because of low usage of service “A” while a nearby component of type “X” for another service “B” is overloaded and providing a poor QoS due to peak usage of service “B”. Conventional service configuration methods have not allowed sharing or reconfiguration of such resources in a simple, cost-effective manner. For instance, heavy long distance traffic may overwhelm SCP inter-exchange services while other SCP resources that are dedicated to Local Number Portability (LNP) remain idle. Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a system for assignment of available communication resources that provides the most efficient use of the resources. It also would be desirable to provide a means of monitoring the performance of the selected resources and reallocating the resources as necessary.